


Loyal

by Jenett



Series: Hufflepuff Virtues [2]
Category: Alternity - A Harry Potter Alternate Universe, Harry Potter Alternity - Fandom
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Harry Potter - Alternity, Hufflepuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-20 14:57:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4791548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenett/pseuds/Jenett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written as background fic for the <a href="http://hpalternity.com">Harry Potter Alternity project</a>.</p><p>Part of three stories exploring internal character thoughts for Aurora Sinistra during Year 4, thematically centered on three Hufflepuff virtues, as she tries to figure out what the implications of her relationship with Rabastan Lestrange (Raz) and the circles he moves in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loyal

**Author's Note:**

> The specific larger events mentioned are part of Alternity’s canon and discussed with the other relevant players, but her reactions and opinions are decidedly hers and not necessarily canon for the universe.

**April 4th, 1995 : Spencer House : New London**

_The skies are painted with unnumbered sparks._  
_They are all fire and every one doth shine,_  
_But there’s but one in all doth hold his place._  
Julius Caesar: III i 65-70 : Shakespeare

Precession is a problem. 

People talk about Polaris as the northern star. That everything is constant, loyally promenading in order and simplicity around that center. That it always has. 

Few people ask the astronomers. She knows the lie - and better than most, with all the reconciliation of old charts she’s done. 

And today, this week, she cannot avoid it. 

She lies there, in the broad bed at Spencer House, in those moments between dozing and waking, and opens her eyes to mid-afternoon light filtering through the windows. The room is quiet and she is alone but for her book and her journal. 

She feels like she has moved two thousand years without knowing it, from a world that knew Kochab as the center of the northern sky to a world spinning around Polaris. Tiny shift after tiny shift, until all of a sudden, the center of the sky is different. A new constant reference in the surrounding darkness. 

The question, now, is what to do about it. 

Last night had nearly been more than she could take. Minute after minute, hour after hour, long and far into the night, talking and listening. Bearing his frustration, his worry, and that difficult and wonderful surge of mingled protection and love. 

But how could she explain? That she had found herself knowing her axis was shifting past that pivot point, but needing to be sure of herself, before turning to him? Needing to map and measure and learn what had changed. And what hadn’t. 

She’s quite sure she failed at that. The explanation, not the charting. Once she turned her attention to redrawing her own personal sky, it fell into place and sense, even as wavering and shaky as her focus had been this past month. 

And so here, on the other end - perhaps it would be all right. When they’d finally gone to sleep, it was not with everything solved and tidy and sorted. But there was the hope it might be, and sooner than later. Even if, at the same time, she was terrified by what she’d clearly almost lost, and tongue-tied in the face of his urge for protection overreaching their happiness. 

When she’d woken this morning, long enough to leave a note for Narcissa, her head was still spinning, and she was still exhausted. She’d curled up again to read and doze and not think at all for a while. But now, she wondered. What next? 

There are things she does know. 

She knows that he is now the center point on which her axis aligns. She knows this fundamentally, surely, as certain as when the sun will set (7:38pm in New London and 7:54 over Hogwarts). 

She does not know quite when it happened, mind. Not whether it was the curse and long recovery, or that moment after the Quidditch World Cup. Maybe that night (six months minus 2 days ago) in October. Perhaps talking - and other things - on the tower in December. It could be long before that, his careful apology near eighteen months ago, when she realised she would rather have him in her life than not, for all his complexities. 

Somewhere, in one of those moments, what was close became distant, and what was distant became close. She can no longer imagine anyone else in that place, that center, that illusion of perfect balance and stillness and dynamic perfection. 

But she knows other things. 

She knows that to keep this, to keep her center where it is, she will have to change. She will have to, somehow, find a way to navigate the world of the Council Members and their wives (and the few rare husbands). And yet, through it, remain herself, and do it in a way that will convince him she is happy. 

She knows, too, that that world is not easy. 

She sees that there are, in the Lord Protector, all the signs of a coming supernova: a cycle of collapsing and expanding fueled by enormous mass and power. She wishes she did not know this, but after the Games, that would be a lie. She thinks of M1, and the Crab Nebula that remains of it, and wonders what will happen to her - to all of them - after that vast explosion finally occurs. How long it might take to happen - months, years, decades. 

New stars and planets are born from nebulae, and they are full of potential. But the novae that birth them are terrible in their power and destruction.

She also knows that if she loves Raz - and she does - she must come to terms with his past. In some ways, what he’s done is the easy part. Not that it is simple, for it isn’t. But it’s known, it’s completed. What’s hard is coming to terms with what it means. For him. For her. For where they go from here. 

She lies there, her eyes half-closed, thinking hard. Thinking about those glimpses and moments, all the times he’s flared into protectiveness, and backed down. About what’s driving that, beyond love, beyond caring, beyond the pleasure of the moment. 

And she remembers that first night together. The bitterness, when he thought he'd lost Barty. The stories, the ones that came pouring out of him, about other losses. About Evan. About Regulus. About other moments. Other deaths. And she comes to give shape to what losing her might do to him. Why he orbits back and again to wanting to protect her. Not out of her weakness, or her naivety, or her need, but out of his. (Not that he'd ever admit it, she knows.)

There are constants in his own sky. But they're constants of loneliness. Of loss. Of lack of love. Of people who've pushed him and pulled him into service, into fighting, into suffering and injury, into grief.

His family, his friends - they are fond of him, she believes. But she still cannot tell, after watching them with this in mind, whether they are fond of him for himself. Or whether, instead, they are fond of him for the symbol of what he is: lighthearted humour and ease and distraction when that’s needed, unquestioning fierce loyalty when that’s the chore at hand. She thinks it’s the latter. No wonder he - and she - fell together, into conversations of a far different kind, if that’s what he’d known.

Realising that, putting names to the shapes of the scattered points of light in his sky, makes it easier. And she feels, in that moment, a new pattern shaping. Not built on her insecurity or her very real limitations - but instead, on what they might do together, if he had more certainty, more choices, a stable point of his own to turn toward. Someone who saw him as him, neither symbol nor tool. 

It's that which gives her a direction again. She cannot save the world. She knows that, has known it since that shattering moment in the Games when she was sure what was going on, but could not speak it. But she can, in the small ways, make spaces. For Raz. For some of her students. For friends. Perhaps, in time, for her children. 

She is not sure yet how. She has more influence, more connections, if she keeps hold of the YPL. But she is also more at risk, and so are those she cares for, if she does. She is no Gryffindor, to seek the trial of investigation or challenge again and again. (And yet she hates herself for letting them make her afraid of it.) 

There's no arithmancy to solve those equations, she fears, and yet, she must somehow try.

But there are things she can do. 

She can - no matter what else - stop fighting him quite so hard about that protectiveness, the desire to keep her safe from all the harms of the world. She does not fully understand it, but she doesn’t need to. Not now she knows where her axis truly is. Not now she has charted the patterns in his sky. 

She can keep her eyes open, for those spaces in the patterns - and she notices patterns - that give, enough to let something helpful slip through. She’s been doing that already: the quiet benefits to Sally-Anne Perks, to Felix, the quick passage of information to Campanella and Delilah and Gilly and Sigrun over dinner. Those spaces like the outward progression of the planets, neither burning in fierce heat, nor freezing in cold, but in that narrow path where life can flourish. 

And she can use what influence she has, where she can. A warm and comfortable office, open to student conversation. (Whatever the mutters in the staff room are, about how she’s coddling the children, being too soft.) A shoulder at need. A conversation in the sheltering dark with the man she loves.

It is not enough. But it is a beginning. 

And whatever else, she has a place for her loyalty to rest.


End file.
